Eye Key Uhhhhhhh...

The lights were dim. I stood in a grouping of 100 racers, warming up, stretching out, and anticipating the opening bell. Each eyed the other carefully, subtly jockeying for a slight position advantage. The trick is, if your shoulder is in front of the other person, then, effectively, you've edged them out.

No, it wasn't the opening of the Boston Marathon--it was the start of operating hours for our new Ikea store.

Before today, we were afraid to enter the same zip code as this monstrous, blue store in the north part of Dallas, Texas. Fran got a catalog, and has been poring over it for about a month or so. Occasionally, she would look up and say "This can't be real!" I guess the prices were much lower than she expected.

Our taste in furniture has differed since right before we got married. I had surprised her by renting a little larger apartment for us to move into together (I was living in a tiny studio), and she had come over to "help" me move. The truck was next to the dumpster, and, somehow, half my stuff ended up in the wrong container. My favorite was this coffee table that I could (and would) stand on all the time. I think it takes talent to chop a coffee table out of rough 4x4's, nail them together, and slap some dark stain on it--to me, it doesn't matter if it doesn't match anything else that you have--that's a freakin' marvel of engineering. I was sad to see it go. I had one of those hammered medieval pewter placques that was a nice, picturesque tavern scene. Fran frisbeed it out into the dumpster from my front porch--you gotta admit, she did it with style...


So, I arranged to take a couple of hours off this morning and accompanied her. When we were first dating, we would go hang out at the mall (we were teenagers), so it kind of felt like old times. Also, I was overwhelmed inexplicably with the impulse to purchase and eat Swedish meatballs (yes--for sale).

I wasn't expecting a vote, but maybe a little veto power in case I couldn't stand what she picked out.

The bell rang, the lights came up, and the herd departed with a ceremonial "moo", grazing slowly across the showroom in all directions.

The crowd was very diverse--about 30 feet from the entrance I heard someone speaking Swedish (don't ask me how I know it was Swedish, but it WAS). Now that was impressive. I turned to Fran, we were still just wow'd by the dizzying expanse of everything (the Dallas Morning News even wrote an article about how not to get overwhelmed at Ikea when shopping there), and said "Hey, check it out, they even brought in real Swedes..." Like they were a prop to help sell the furniture.

Fran was in her element. I guess the gimmick of this place is: funky Scandanavian furniture with clean lines, low prices, that "Euro feel" (not my favorite), and the "flat pack" concept. Seriously, these guys could flat pack a Saab for you if you needed it. You could buy a couch and somehow the box is like 6 inches thick...

(Somebody STOP the madness....)\

So, we scurried around for 2 HOURS (I mean, come on, how many permuatations of bookshelves could there possibly be?) measuring things, comparing colors and styles, and recalculating costs before I finally started to fade. I felt like all the oxygen was being extruded from my body and I started feeling dizzy, my head pounding, and gradually I felt like I was going to spontaneously combust all over their white lacquered (whatever the hell it was). So, we broke for lunch.

One of the things that has kept us married for 14 years is my knowledge of my own limitations (insert your own jokes here...) So, we had taken separate cars--Yes, I'm smart like that. I dropped her off after lunch and, thankful that I was swamped at work, drove off to do...anything else I could think of.

OVER SEVEN hours later, Fran emerged with 7 flat-pack boxes of assembly penance for me to do (I've already got the electric screwdriver charging up), along with 5 bags of "accessories". Fran says someone saw her walking out and said "Well, someone went nuts at Ikea today."

Yes, exactly. But I'm glad she got what she wanted and it is going to look cool once I get it all put together.